Rassilon Falls
by Marcus S. Lazarus
Summary: The Doctor's thoughts as he reflects on the Master's 'conquest' of Earth, and the final confrontation with Rassilon 'EoT' spoilers; ties in with Future War seen in EDA
1. The Doctor's Resolution

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; usual drill for this kind of thing

Feedback: Appreciated

AN: Just my own theory regarding how the Gallifrey we witnessed in "End of Time" fits in with Gallifrey's fate in the Eighth Doctor novels published between 1997 and 2005; reading my previous story "Filling in the Blanks" might help understand what's happening here, but if you haven't read it, a basic summary of the essential events of the Eighth Doctor Adventures and the War will be provided in the next chapter

AN 2: This story starts when the Doctor's working on repairing the Vinvocci ship and has his conversation with Wilf

Rassilon Falls

As he sat on the deck of the Vinvocci ship, working away at the wiring he'd so hastily disabled earlier, the Doctor couldn't help but wish that this job was more difficult; it actually wasn't that hard to put everything back in working order- even if they couldn't turn anything on with the Master down there waiting for them to show themselves-, which left him with little to do but curse his own stupidity.

There were comparatively few occasions where the Doctor genuinely wished he'd arrived somewhere earlier than he had- most of the time when he arrived somewhere at the last minute he'd never have even known there was a problem if he'd arrived on the scene before he had, and would probably have moved on without realising he was needed-, but this was definitely one of them; if he'd just been quicker responding to Ood Sigma's message, maybe he'd have been able to stop the Master's resurrection...

And now, because he'd been so determined to live the last days of his life by attending to what he'd _wanted _to do, the entire Earth was under the Master's control- there wasn't anyone left _but _the Master down there right now (Donna didn't count; with the psychic defence he'd left her having been triggered she'd be out for hours, and waking her up would accomplish nothing apart from setting off a potential collapse all over again)-, and here he was, stuck rewiring a Vinvocci ship with no clear plan on what to do next...

"Aye-aye," the voice of Wilfred Mott- the oldest person to ever travel with him for the first time, but as loyal a friend as he could have wanted in this crisis- said, breaking the Doctor's train of thought and prompting him to glance over at the door as Wilf entered the room, hesitancy in his every step. "Got this old tub mended?"

"Just trying to fix the heating," the Doctor replied briefly; until he decided what his next course of action should be, he didn't want to give too much away.

"I've always dreamt of a view like that," Wilf said after a brief grunt as he sat on a slightly raised part of the floor, indicating the window in front of him with a slight smile. "I'm an astronaut!"

His grin broadened slightly as he pointed at the window. "There's dawn over England- look! Brand new day."

He paused for a moment, melancholy taking over his expression as he stared at the sight before him.

"My wife's buried down there," he said simply. "I might never visit her again now."

The Doctor knew all too well how that felt; one of the main reasons he'd constructed a memorial to the Time Lords- as well as his deceased former companions, in those cases when he'd actually witnessed their deaths- on the Eye of Orion was to give himself somewhere to go when he wanted to grieve for their loss...

"D'you think he changed them?" Wilf asked, looking back at the Doctor. "In their graves?"

The Doctor didn't think that would be the case- he doubted that the 'Immortality Gate' could affect deceased tissue-, but there was no way to know for certain.

"I'm sorry," he said simply.

"No, not your fault," Wilf replied, shaking his head a little as he looked reassuring at the Time Lord.

"Isn't it?" the Doctor asked, staring reflectively upwards at the sight of the globe before them.

"Oh, 1948, I was over there," Wilf said, pointing at the window before them in an evident attempt to lighten the mood. "End of the mandate in Palestine. Private Mott; skinny little idiot, I was. Stood on this rooftop in the middle of a skirmish. Like a blizzard, all them bullets in the air; the world gone mad..."

For a moment, the Doctor couldn't help but remember some of his old experiences in war; even the comment about bullets reminded him of that time he'd ended up taking a brief trip back to Leonidas's last stand and seen all those arrows flying across the sky...

"Yeah..." Wilf said, his voice trailing off uncomfortably as he noticed the Doctor's expression. "You don't want to listen to an old man's tales, do you?"

"I'm older than you," the Doctor replied with a nonchalant smile.

"Get away," Wilf said, looking at the Doctor in surprise.

"I'm nine hundred and six," the Doctor said, a slight amusement in his voice at Wilf's stunned reaction.

"What... _really_, though?" Wilf asked.

The Doctor paused for a moment, briefly contemplating giving his true age for once- allowing Rose to assume that the nine centuries he'd been travelling in the TARDIS was his age was one thing, but he really should have grown past that habit by now; his amnesic exile on Earth during his eighth body might not have been the liveliest period of his life, but it hadn't been _that _dull, and even his frustrating childhood on Gallifrey had played its part on who he was-, but he shook that thought aside; telling Wilf that he was over thirteen hundred might be a larger span of time than even an open-minded man like Wilf could cope with, particularly when the current crisis had to take precedent over anything.

"Yeah," he said, with a brief nod, leaving it at that.

"Nine hundred years...!" Wilf whispered, clearly still in awe at the time frame. "We must look like insects to you!"

"I think you look like giants," the Doctor replied quietly, his mind flashing back to all those occasions in his lives when he'd witnessed humans prevail over seemingly impossible odds and achieve victories and goals that so many other species had either failed to achieve or only accomplished after a much greater length of time...

"Listen," Wilf said, reaching into the pocket of his coat and pulling out an old-fashioned six-chambered gun, looking uncomfortably at the Time Lord, "I... I want you to have this. I kept it all this time, and I thought..."

"No," the Doctor said, cutting Wilf off mid-sentence as he drew back slightly, shaking his head at his friend.

"No, but..." Wilf continued, fumbling slightly as he looked at the Doctor. "If you take it, you could..."

"_No_," the Doctor replied simply.

He might have wielded guns before, but that was always as an absolute last resort; he would _never _take them up while there was still the possibility of finding another way to do things.

As Wilf stared silently at the gun in his hand, a thought occurred to the Doctor.

"You had that gun in the mansion," he said, looking at Wilf with a slight curiosity. "You could have shot the Master there and then."

"Too scared, I s'pose," Wilf replied in a low, embarrassed voice.

The Doctor couldn't help but smile slightly at that; with what the Master had been doing when they'd entered the mansion, nobody could have blamed Wilf for taking action to stop him, and yet Wilf hadn't taken that opportunity.

Fear wasn't the reason for his inaction, the Doctor knew- anyone who'd try and stand up to a Dalek with a paintball gun after the entire Earth had been moved to a different location in space could hardly be afraid at shooting an obvious psychopath such as the Master-; the only thing that could have stopped Wilf was _moral _reasons...

"I'd be proud," he said, smiling at Wilf.

"Of what?" Wilf asked, looking back at him in confusion.

"If you _were _my dad," the Doctor replied briefly.

"Now, come, don't start..." Wilf said, as the Doctor smiled reassuring at him, remembering the Master's mocking question about Wilf's connection to him when the two of them were tied up in the Naismith mansion; Wilf might not have Quences's intelligence or life span, but he was definitely a lot more accepting of what others might want to do with their lives than the head of Lungbarrow had ever been.

"But you said..." Wilf said uncertainly, clearly thinking about what he was about to say. "You were told 'he will knock four times' and then you die. Well, that's him, isn't it? The Master? The noise in his head? The Master is gonna kill you."

"Yeah," the Doctor admitted, deciding not to mention that it would make a hat trick for the Master; technically he had never actually _killed _any of the Doctor's past lives- his death during the Logopolis crisis had been a side-effect of the Master's schemes to control Logopolis's power rather than the main goal, and him getting shot while taking the Master's remains back to Gallifrey had definitely been an accident given that the whole point had been for the Master to take the Doctor's remaining lives for himself-, but that was only by a technicality that it would be too complicated to explain at this point.

"Then kill him first," Wilf said, offering the gun to him.

"And that's how the Master started," the Doctor replied simply.

He wasn't sure what he was specifically referring to, really- the death of Torvic when they were children had served as the catalyst to the Master's brutality in dealing with problems even if it hadn't driven him all the way, but his subsequent willingness to resort to murder during his travels even if his final goal was always to try and do essentially the right thing during the time when he was still known as Koschei had been far from encouraging even before he took control of the Darkheart-, but the point remained the same.

"It's not like I'm an innocent," the Doctor admitted. "I've taken lives."

Despite his own resolve, he couldn't stop himself from tearing up at the thought of what he'd done just before receiving that last message from the Ood; so desperate to find something good that had come from having the Time Lords taken out of the equation- _something _that he could use to save lives after being forced to sacrifice so many- and it had taken a woman who could have been a good friend sacrificing herself to make him realise that he'd been wrong.

"Then I got worse," he continued. "I got _clever_; manipulated people into taking their own..."

He wasn't sure at that point if he was talking about his recent mistakes or some of the things he'd done in his seventh incarnation; his eighth body had tried to atone for his past self's 'crimes'- just because it had been the right thing to do didn't make it any easier to remember destroying an entire alternate timeline-, but even if he'd never gone as far as the seventh on a regular basis that incarnation's own actions had forced the Doctors who came after him to always remember what they had done back then...

"Sometimes I think the Time Lord lives too long," he admitted briefly, recalling a fear that had been voiced by more than one companion after learning his true age; just as Wilf had done, they worried about how he perceived them, so young compared to his true age...

It never made a difference to him, of course, but that didn't mean he didn't understand their concerns; he valued them for their ability to cram so many experiences into their short lives when so few of his people had ever really made an effort to do _anything _significant during their existences when they had thirteen lives to do it in, but that didn't mean that there might not come some day when he might have lived so long in one life that he _did _feel that way...

"I can't," he said at last, shaking his head as he stared at the gun in Wilf's hand. "I just _can't_."

"If the Master dies," Wilf asked, looking at him with a certain desperation, almost as though he was trying to deny the Doctor's own denial, "what happens to all the people?"

"I don't know-" the Doctor began (It was the truth; he had theories, but he didn't really _know_ what would happen).

"Doctor," Wilf repeated, his tone insistent, "_what happens_?"

"The template snaps," the Doctor replied precisely, trying to distance himself from the implications of what he was saying.

No matter how psychotically deranged the Master was- no matter the fact that he was dying already after his improper resurrection, to the point where shooting him might have actually been the kindest thing to do to spare him from what was going to happen to his body-, he wouldn't- he _couldn't_- go that far when there was any chance an alternative could be found.

If he simply shot his enemy to solve a problem...

He couldn't do that.

He wouldn't be the Doctor if he resorted to those kind of measures if alternatives were available.

Even as Wilf ordered him to take the gun, tearfully begging him not to die at the same time, the Doctor knew that he couldn't do it.

"Never," he said simply, hoping that he could come up with an alternative solution before too much more time had passed; if it came to a choice between his own morality and his friend's emotional health, he wasn't sure which he'd pick...


	2. Race Against Time

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; usual drill for this kind of thing

Feedback: Appreciated

AN: For those unaware of the Future War that played a part in the Eighth Doctor Adventures series, here's a basic summary of events;

During the Eighth Doctor's travels, he became aware of the Future War- a war that would be fought between the Time Lords and an as-yet-unidentified Enemy-, twice becoming involved in the events of the War as he was first forced to prevent either side getting their hands on the body of his own thirteenth incarnation and later worked with a fleet of highly evolved TARDISes to stop a creature known as the Memeovore- a devourer of concept- from consuming the universe after the future Time Lords were tricked into releasing it in the belief it could be used as a weapon for their side. Given that the 'Future War' arc ended with the Doctor being forced to destroy Gallifrey after learning that the Enemy had been drawn to Gallifrey due to his own mistake- the planet having been virtually conquered by the Enemy in the first strike and the Doctor seeing no way to save the universe other than to annihilate both sides right then-, the Doctor never fought in the War _himself_, thus making his talk of the conflict lasting years in "End of Time" impractical, so I came up with the theory described here as a possible resolution to tie the two conflicting continuities together

Rassilon Falls

"_A star fell from the sky_," the Master's voice suddenly said from the ship's radio; evidently the other Time Lord was broadcasting on a wide-range frequency to make sure the Doctor heard him.

"_Don't you want to know where from_?" the Master continued (The Doctor already knew he wasn't going to like the answer; the Master's various incarnations might vary in how _much _they told him about his plans before they'd finished putting them in action, but any time they wanted to tell him anything it was because they had a _very _good reason for it). "_Because now it makes sense, Doctor. The whole of my life... my destiny. The star was a diamond... and the diamond is a white point star_."

The Doctor couldn't believe his ears.

A _white point star_...

But that could only mean...

And if it hadn't come from Gallifrey _before _the confrontation with the Faction- Romana had been pinning all her faith on a retreat in those 'other' Gallifreys her Council had created before they'd been destroyed as the Daleks (Or the Faction, whichever it was) triggered the collapse of Time Lord history, and the first assault had come too quickly for anyone to try anything like this during that assault even if they'd had the power to do so-, than it could only have come from the War he'd erased...

The War where the Time Lords had been willing to plant a sleeper weapon to destroy Earth based on the _chance _that it was the Enemy homeworld, the War where they'd attempted to release the Fendahl- the Thing That Eats Death- to try and use it as a weapon after he'd barely managed to stop a weakened _fragment _of the Fendahl himself, the war where his own corpse had been nothing more than a weapon for whichever side acquired it...

The War which still _had _to have happened in some form because he had _experienced _the events that he recalled taking place...

"_And I have worked all night to sanctify that gift_," the Master's voice continued, the speaker sounding increasingly satisfied with himself. "_Now the star is mine. I can increase the signal... and use it as a lifeline_!"

The Doctor couldn't believe it; not even the Master could be _that _foolish...

Actually, when he remembered that the Master had probably missed the worst of the war after he fled following the capture of the Crucible in the first strike, he probably _was _that foolish; he wouldn't have been there to see how _truly _bad things became, even assuming he'd ever experienced the main War rather than the War that had been before he cut it short...

"_Keep watching, Doctor_," the Master continued (The Doctor thought he'd said something else, but he couldn't be certain; he must have momentarily tuned out after becoming lost in his thoughts while the Master was talking). "_This should be _spectacular!_ Over and out_."

"Wh-what's he on about?" Wilf asked, looking urgently at the Doctor as the Master terminated the transmission. "Wh-what's he doing? D-Doctor, what does that mean?!"

"The white point star is found on only one planet," the Doctor replied, staring at Wilf with wide, horrified eyes. "Gallifrey! Which means..."

He couldn't believe the horror he felt as he turned over the implications of this latest revelation in his mind, but he knew that horror was the only real response; the possibility of the Time Lords who'd been willing to release the Fendahl returning to the universe in _this _manner...

"It's the Time Lords," he said, looking grimly at Wilf. "The Time Lords are returning."

"Well, I mean, that's good, isn't it?" Wilf said, looking eagerly at the Doctor. "I mean, that's your people!"

The Doctor didn't even allow himself to think about what he was doing as he grabbed the gun Wilf had offered him moments ago; even as he stared at the gun, his mind tried to remember all the times he'd used this kind of weapon for what it _hadn't _been designed for- his confrontation with Cosgrove where he'd shot the other man's bullets out of the air rather than trying to shoot at the man himself- in a desperate attempt to distract himself from what he was about to do.

This was it.

One of those moments that he had always tried to avoid all his lives.

To save the world...

He would _have _to kill.

Trying to avoid thinking too deeply about what he was about to do, the Doctor ran to the bridge of the ship, barely registering Wilf close behind him as he charged through the doors leading to the bridge, just in time to hear the four-beat rhythm that he'd previously heard during his brief telepathic link with the Master in that quarry so long ago.

"What's that?" the Vinvocci who had been posing as Doctor Addams asked.

"Coming from Earth," Rossiter said, studying the computers in confusion. "It's on every single wave length..."

For a moment, the Doctor could only stare in horror at the world below him, the world that would soon be subject to the full fury of the War that he'd sacrificed his own people to try and avert, and then he was running desperately around the room, trying desperately to undo the damage he'd caused earlier when he'd stopped the Vinvocci leaving Earth to its fate (That was the thing so few people seemed to get, really; _breaking _things was easy, but it took definite strength to try and _repair _something...)

"But you said your people were dead!" Wilf's voice said, cutting into the Doctor's thoughts as he continued his work. "Past tense!"

"Inside the Time War," the Doctor replied (This wasn't the time to get into an explanation about the Paradox/Dalek virus and the fact that he'd technically erased the Time War from existence; it had still been fought _somewhere_, and that was the important thing).

"But the whole war was Time Locked," he continued- the ripple effect generated by Gallifrey's destruction might stop anyone travelling to Gallifrey specifically, but it also essentially cut the whole War off from the rest of the universe-, "like it was sealed in a time bubble- it's not a bubble, but just think of a bubble-; nothing can get in _or _out of the Time Lock."

He paused to look more urgently at his current companion. "Don't you see; nothing can get in or get out, except... something that was already there!"

"The signal!" Wilf said, pointing at the Doctor in realisation. "Since he was a kid!"

"If they can throw that signal," the Doctor continued- he briefly wondered if the signal had been there before the War or if it had only existed after the Time War had begun; it wouldn't be impossible to assume that Romana's Council had brought the Master back for the War before the first assault on Gallifrey began rather than him being brought back in the War itself, but there were so many other factors contributing to the Master's descent into villainy that the 'drumbeat' he kept going on about lately would have only made it easier rather than being the sole contributing factor-, "they can escape! Before they die!"

"Well, then, big reunion!" Wilf said, looking at the Doctor with an uncertain smile; he evidently knew that _something _was wrong but couldn't understand what had triggered the Doctor's current panic. "We'll have a party!"

"There will be no party!" the Doctor spat, as he aimed his sonic screwdriver at another console; so long as he kept on the move, he could stop himself thinking too much about the sheer _scale _of what was coming for them now...

"But I've heard you talk about your people like they're wonderful!" Wilf protested in confusion.

"That's how I _choose _to remember them!" the Doctor said, looking urgently over at Wilf. "The Time Lords of old... but then they went to war!"

Even if he'd cut the War off before it could really start, the memories of what he'd seen during his trip back to the city of the Old Ones with Fitz and Compassion would always haunt him; the idea that his people would willingly regenerate into forms that _twisted _simply to win a war...

"An _endless _war!" he continued, hoping that Wilf would accept what he was saying without asking for too many details; if the Master was sending that signal already, they didn't have the time to wait. "And it changed them... right to the core! You've seen my enemies, Wilf; the Time Lords are more dangerous than any of them!"

"Time Lords?" Addams put in, looking dismissively at him as he turned to face her. "What Lords? Anyone want to explain?"

"Right, yes, you," the Doctor said, pointing firmly at the cactus-like alien in resolution, "this is a salvage ship, yes? You're trawling the asteroid field looking for junk?"

"Yeah, what about it?" Addams countered.

"So... you've got _asteroid lasers_!" the Doctor concluded.

"Yes," Rossiter pointed out, in the exasperated tone the Doctor had always tried to stop himself using when talking with his companions, "but they're all frazzled."

"Consider them _un_frazzled!" the Doctor said, flipping a switch and causing the ship doors to suddenly fly open around him.

"You there!" the Doctor said, pointing at Addams (He briefly wondered what the Vinvocci's real name was, but decided to put that issue aside until later; he had more immediate matters to attend to now)." I'm going to need you on navigation! And you; get in the laser pod!"

He didn't even stop to do more than register Rossiter moving in the direction he'd just indicated, simply turning to look over at Wilf with a brief, small smile.

"Laser number two," he said to the old man. "The old soldier's got one more battle."

"This ship can't move," Addams said, speaking slowly at him as though he was an idiot as Wilf got to his feet. "It's dead."

"Fixed the 'heating'!" the Doctor said- he couldn't believe anyone had actually believed he'd take that long to fix the _heating _on this ship-, throwing two massive switches forward to restore the ship's power and lighting to its original intensity.

"But now they can see us!" Addams yelled.

"Oh yes!" the Doctor said, moving to take up position behind the ship's main control systems, staring out at the planet before him, tensing his mind for what he was about to do; he might not have done much manual piloting over the course of his lives- even with all the extra controls he'd had to add to the TARDIS over the years this was still fundamentally a different kind of flying-, but he was confident that he could pull this particular stunt off if he had to.

"This is my ship and you're not moving it!" Addams tried to protest. "Step away from the wheel!"

"There's an old Earth saying, captain," the Doctor said, his breathing heavy as he prepared for what he was about to attempt. "A phrase of great power and wisdom and consolation to the soul in times of need..."

"What's that then?" Addams asked bluntly.

"_Allons-y_!" the Doctor yelled, pulling back on the controls and sending the ship hurtling forward, barely registering the sound of his allies temporarily stumbling backwards as the force of the acceleration momentarily knocked them off their feet, his attention completely focused on what he was doing, barely registering as the ship began to glow around him, the words of the Vinvocci behind him- Wilf at least seemed to believe that he knew what he was doing, even if he himself had some doubts about his sanity in attempting something like this in such a small ship- mere background noise...

"You two!" he yelled, turning back to look in frustration at Wilf and Rossiter. "What'd I say? _Lasers_!"

"What for?" Rossiter asked in confusion.

"Because of the _missiles_!" the Doctor said, turning back to briefly gaze in frustration at Rossiter before he turned his attention back to the ship, already opening his mind to the slight temporal awareness that he had once used to shoot down bullets and step through fans. "We've got to fight off the entire planet!"

As the missiles of the world began to fly towards them, the Doctor barely allowed himself a moment's pause as he flew the ship across the sea, weaving around just enough to throw the missiles off while allowing WIlf and Rossiter time to use the lasers; the tracking systems might be automatic, but if he went too fast he ran the risk of putting a few missiles out of visual range long enough for them to reach the ship. Screaming out orders to fire as he flew towards the coast of Britain, Addams updating him on the current missile count as he continued on his desperate path towards his destination, all he could do was respond on automatic, calling out when to fire without being fully aware of when and how the missiles would be a danger, all his focus on reaching the Naismith Mansion before the Master could complete his plans... barely even registering the missiles that smashed the front windows of the ship beyond his automatic ducking behind the controls to protect himself from the worst of the resulting glass... he was getting closer to the mansion... the missiles were all gone... closer... closer... Wilf was asking him something that he couldn't here over the pounding of his own heartsbeats in his ears... closer... _closer_...


	3. The Last Stand of Rassilon

Disclaimer: I own nothing you recognise; usual drill for this kind of thing

Feedback: Appreciated

Rassilon Falls

At the last moment between flight and impact, the Doctor pulled the ship sharply upwards, bent down to open a hatch in the floor of the ship- a typical means of entrance and exit when the ship had landed-, looked briefly up at Wilf one last time, and then leapt from the ship, hurtling through the air for a few seconds before he crashed through the glass dome on the mansion's roof as the ship hurtled back upwards, his suit tearing and skin being grazed and ripped by the glass shards around him, his body shaking as he struck the floor below him, the impact slowed by the glass just enough to stop the fall being fatal- the last thing he wanted was to regenerate from _another _fall-, as he raised the gun to aim at the figures standing before him.

The Master standing behind him (glimpsed in the brief moments between his entrance and his impact) was no surprise, of course- he was only surprised that the Master was still wearing that black hoodie; with access to the mansion's resources he would have thought that his old friend would have assumed something more stylish from Naismith's wardrobe-, but it was when he took in the sight of the figure before him dressed in the robes of the Lord President that he realised the situation had just become much worse, prompting him to briefly lose his grip on the gun at the impossible sight.

The man standing at the front of the small group of Time Lords appearing in the room before him and the Master... the man dressed in the robes of the Time Lord presidency... the man who had orchestrated this insane plan to restore Gallifrey...

He'd almost have preferred it if it had been Romana; it might have been terrifying to see what his friend had become in her third incarnation as she prepared for the War, but at least she'd been willing to _listen _to him towards the end, even if it had taken actually witnessing the Faction putting their plans into action to realise the scale of the mistakes she'd made.

But _Rassilon_...

Just the _thought _that the man before him had somehow managed to escape the anti-time prison that he, Charley and C'rizz had left him in after their return to this universe was enough to make him sick; he'd known that the Time Lords were desperate, but bringing back the man who'd tried to defy all the natural laws of evolution and turn him into an anti-time-contaminated assassin...

If he needed any further proof that the Gallifrey of the future was a nightmarish version of the world he'd known, this was it; bringing Rassilon back after he'd nearly unleashed something as potentially devastating as _Zagreus _on the universe was nothing short of insanity...

"My Lord Doctor," Rassilon said, a mocking tone in his voice as the Doctor fought to get back to his feet, agony flooding what felt like every part of his body. "My Lord Master... we are gathered here for the end."

"_Listen to me_," the Doctor gasped as he stared up at Rassilon, gradually moving backwards so that he was on his knees rather than simply lying sprawled on the floor- at least nothing seemed to be broken; he just felt sore-, "you _can't_-!"

"It is a fitting paradox," Rassilon continued, all trace of the benevolent figure who'd aided his first five selves during Borusa's mad quest for immortality pushed aside in favour of the megalomania that had driven him to create Zagreus, "that our salvation comes at the hand of our most infamous child."

"Oh, he's not _saving _you," the Doctor spat; he didn't know if Rassilon took that statement literally or if it was just a statement, but either way it was time to correct that. "Don't you realise what he's doing...?"

"Hey, no, hey!" the Master yelled, pointing accusing at him. "That's mine! Hush!"

Staring at the figure before him- most likely unaware of the man's true identity; pictures of Rassilon wouldn't count for anything given that this was definitely a new incarnation, and during his brief time in the Dark Tower the Master had been more focused on threatening the Doctor's first three bodies than in getting any sense of Rassilon's mental presence before he was knocked out by the Brigadier-, the Master spread his arms to indicate his other selves.

"Look around you," he said mockingly, as his 'clones' turned to face Rassilon and the other Time Lords. "I've transplanted myself into every single human being... but who wants a mongrel little species like them? Because now I can transplant myself into every single Time Lord!"

The Doctor allowed himself a brief moment to wonder how the Master expected to accomplish something like that- the Immortality Gate was currently on the other side of the temporal fissure that Rassilon and his 'advance guard' had opened to arrive on Earth in the first place-, but concluded that it didn't matter; judging by the tension in Rassilon's stance, he was preparing himself to strike back.

"Oh yes, Mr President, _sir_!" the Master continued, mocking scorn evident in his voice. "Standing there all noble and resplendent and decrepit. Think how much better you're gonna look as me!"

Rassilon didn't bother to respond verbally to the Master's taunts. Instead he raised his left hand, revealing a thick metal glove that put the Doctor in mind of a knight's gauntlet, and pointed it at the Master as it began to glow a brilliant blue. Instantly, the other Masters' heads began to flick rapidly from side to side, the heads of those Masters not wearing the full-head-helmets of Joshua Naismith's security staff vibrating too quickly to see their faces, the Master's indignant protests only just audible over the sound of the transformation...

Then, as soon as it had begun, it was over, and the Master was unique once more, with Naismith's staff all staring in confusion at their surroundings.

"On your knees, mankind," Rassilon said, staring in cold contempt at the people around him; the Doctor doubted that Rassilon was even that bothered about their response at this point given that what he was planning was nearly inevitable at this stage, but it was most likely the principle of the thing more than anything else...

"Th-that's fine," the Master said, clearly trying to re-assert his self-perceived authority. "That's good, because you said _salvation_! I still saved you; don't forget that!"

"The approach begins..." Rassilon said, looking upwards as the world began to shake, an almost rapturous expression on his face as he took in what was happening.

"The approach of what?" the Master asked, leaning in slightly to whisper to the Doctor in a low voice (For a moment the Doctor was almost reminded of the times when he'd used that same voice back in the Academy when asking Koschei for a few quick pointers on Cosmic Science, but that thought was swiftly pushed aside).

"_Something is returning_," he said, his teeth clenched as he fought to control his fear at the events now taking place, staring in frustration at his old friend. "Don't you ever listen? That was the prophecy; not some_one_, some_thing_!"

"_What is it_?" the Master asked, clearly growing increasingly desperate to get an answer.

"They're not just bringing back the _species_!" the Doctor yelled, furious at his old friend's ignorance of the implications of his actions; the incarnation that had fought him for so long in his third incarnation would have realised what was happening _long _before now. "It's _Gallifrey_! Right here, right now!"

Even as the Doctor spoke, he sensed the revival of old senses in the back of his mind... the old remnants of the telepathic link to the rest of his people, the link that had been so brutally severed when they died, the link that he'd long ago stopped himself from registering on a conscious level...

And, if the Master's horror-widened eyes as he fell to his knees were any indication, he was just as aware of it as the Doctor was.

"Aha!" he said, clearly trying to salvage something from this mess as Naismith and his staff ran from the mansion in fear as the shaking continued. "I did this! I get the credit! I'm on your side!"

The Doctor couldn't believe his former friend at times; the entire planet was shaking itself apart, and all he could do was try and score points with a species that he'd tried to destroy in his original quest for more lives before going on to sell the secrets of the Matrix itself...

For a moment, the Doctor's attention was drawn to the sound of someone running _into _the room rather than running out of it, his eyes automatically falling on Wilf- faithful old Wilfred Mott, coming in to help at the last minute-, but then Wilf turned towards one of the Vinvocci-glass-shielded radiation booths, a scientist still trapped inside it, and the Doctor was forced to re-evaluate his brief hope.

"Wilf, _don't_!" he yelled desperately, only to be forced to watch as Wilf stepped into the empty box and hit the button, freeing the scientist but almost certainly condemning himself...

"But this is fantastic, isn't it?" the Master's voice said, drawing his attention away from Wilf and back to his rival, once again wondering whether the Master even cared about what he'd done beyond the chance to 'beat' him at something. "The Time Lords restored!"

"You weren't there in the final days of the war," the Doctor said, the brief vision Compassion had shown him of the conflict that would have resulted if the war had been waged beyond the first strike against Gallifrey. "You never saw what was born... but if the Time Lock's broken than _everything's _coming through! Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could-Have-Been King with his Army of Meanwhiles and Never Weres- the war turning to Hell!"

The Doctor knew even as he spoke that he'd exaggerated some features of the war more than he might have done- he'd only received a vague impression of what the Could-Have-Been King was capable of, although he was fairly sure that it had been connected to beings similar to Gabriel and Tanith-, but it made the point he was looking for; breaking the Time Lock could result in _nothing _good.

"And that's what you've opened," he said, staring in contempt at his old friend. "Right above the Earth... _Hell _is descending."

"My kind of world-!" the Master grinned, staring upwards in eager anticipation.

"Just _listen_!" the Doctor protested; if he could make the Master see sense when simply dealing with the Nestene Consciousness, making him understand the danger he faced on this scale _had _to be possible. "Because even the Time Lords can't survive that!"

"We will initiate the final sanction!" Rassilon proclaimed, the Doctor lowering his head in shame as he heard the pronouncement that he'd only glimpsed at the end of Compassion's vision, the proclamation that proved how far his people would fall...

"The end of time will come at my hand!" Rassilon continued, the victory in his voice and the cold certainty on his face reflecting the insane resolve for his people to prevail over all else that had driven him to try and transform the Doctor into his own killer. "The rupture will continue until it rips the Time Vortex apart!"

"That's _suicide_!" the Master interjected, with the tone of a man who knew that he was stating the obvious but didn't know what else could be said.

"We will ascend!" Rassilon continued, his arms spread wide as he spoke, fanaticism blatant on his face. "To become creatures of consciousness alone! Free of these bodies... free of time and cause and effect... where creation itself ceases to be!"

"You see now?" the Doctor asked, glaring at the Master; he wasn't even sure if Rassilon's talk of 'ascension' would have worked or not, but even if it had the consequence of the Time Lords surviving the war that way was too high to pay. "That's what they were planning... in the final days of the war. I _had _to stop them!"

"Then..." the Master said, the slightest trace of fearful tears in his eyes as he stepped forward, spreading his arms as he spoke, "take me with you! Lord President, let me _ascend_ into glory!"

Even as the Master knelt down, however, the Doctor knew what Rassilon was going to say next.

"You are... _diseased_," the first Time Lord spat contemptuously at the Master. "Albeit a disease of our own making."

For a moment, Rassilon stood in silence, as though to ensure that the Master understood his statement, before he spoke again.

"No more," he said simply, raising his gauntlet once again...

Only to be cut off as the Doctor, once again on his feet, took the safety off the gun in his hand, pointing it directly at Rassilon's head.

The bullet might not _kill _Rassilon- he had no way of knowing if Rassilon's new body had any regenerations left to it or if it was little more than a means for him to lead-, but it would at least disorient him long enough for the current connection to be shut down, possibly even allowing a few Time Lords to escape Gallifrey in the moments before the Lock re-sealed itself without any taints of Rassilon's madness affecting their TARDISes...

"Choose your enemy well," Rassilon said, his cold gaze fixed on the Doctor. "We are many; the Master is but one."

"But he's the _President_!" the Master added, and the Doctor knew without looking that his friend was smirking. "Kill him and Gallifrey could be yours!"

_Gallifrey could be yours_...

How often had that been used as an offer to tempt him to stay?

His assumption of the Presidency to defeat the Vardans, Flavia's offer after Borusa's mad quest for immortality- he was starting to wonder if Rassilon had set the Game of Rassilon up to simply eliminate others who might seek immortality in the belief that only he deserved it-, Darkel's suggestion after his defeat of the Valeyard, even Quences's own plans for him, in those long-ago days in Lungbarrow...

_No_.

Even as he turned around to aim his weapon at the Master, he knew he couldn't do it; he wasn't a man who could wield that power the way it would need to be wielded to save his race from what they'd become.

"_He's _to blame, not me!" the Master said, his tone clearly panicked, before he realised what the Doctor was doing.

"Oh," he said, indicating his own head with a brief nod, "the link is inside my _head_! Kill me, the link gets broken, they go back!"

It was almost simpler this way, the Doctor had to admit; the Master was already dying, he'd just be making sure the process happened when it would be best for all concerned....

"You _never _would, you _coward_!" the Master retorted, only for the Doctor to continue to stare at him, remembering all those other occasions when he'd been in this position.

He'd hesitated to shoot Davros, all those long ago days in his fifth incarnation, and the universe had only experienced further pain as a result; wasn't death sometimes _necessary_...?

"Go on then," the Master said, the hesitation and fear in his voice only slightly noticeable. "Do it!"

Even the faint tears in his opponent's eyes at the thought of his approaching death couldn't deter the Doctor's aim; the Master's plans had gone on for far too long...

_But this _wasn't _the Master's plan_...

"Exactly!" the Master said, fear replaced by triumph as the gun was once again aimed at Rassilon. "It's not just me, it's _him_! _He's _the link; kill _him_!"

"The final act of your life is murder," Rassilon sneered at the Doctor, all traces of the old wisdom that had led the early Gallifreyians on the path to mastery of time pushed aside by his insane quest for survival. "But which one of us?"

_Which one of us_?

That was the question, wasn't it?

Kill the Master, the former friend who'd caused him so much pain and grief over the years... the man who had used Victoria, Jo, Adric, Kamelion, Mel, Ace, Chris, and Grace as nothing but pawns to be discarded... the man who had caused him to lose _two _of his lives... the man who had conquered Earth for a year... the man who was only a pawn himself in this latest scheme...

Kill Rassilon, the man who had used his compassion for Charley to turn him into a weapon... the man who had corrupted his own TARDIS to turn against him... the man who influenced the evolution of an entire species to try and escape his prison... the leader who had led Gallifrey to become the Time Lords...

Two choices...

Both impossible...

_Hello, Snail_, a voice whispered in his mind.

Glancing to Rassilon's left, the Doctor's eyes fell on a woman dressed in red, lowering her hands from her eyes, short dark hair around an old but still attractive face, looking tearfully at him.

The Doctor's hearts froze.

_Innocet_...

The only one of his forty-three family members to ever show him kindness as he grew up, the only one who never pressured him to be anything more than what he wanted to be, the only one who'd even come close to understanding him...

She was _there_...

And for a moment, as he stared at her, the Doctor remembered the first time he'd been in a position to make one of two life-altering choices...

Glospin's accusations that he wasn't a true member of the House of Lungbarrow...

The fight between the two that ended with Glospin fleeing in a rage...

His own subsequent flight from Gallifrey, refusing to stay and face his accusers...

Both of the options available would have condemned him then; he'd simply chosen the one that would have allowed him to be free to travel everywhere else he wished, even if Gallifrey itself was cut off from him, rather than return to Lungbarrow and face Glospin's accusations.

Back then, he'd believed that he had only two options.

This time, however...

He watched as Innocet's eyes flicked briefly towards the generator holding the white point star, and inspiration struck.

_He had a third option_....

It was risky, of course, but if it had a _chance _of working...

The first time he'd made one of two impossible choices like this, he'd believed that those two options were all that was available to him.

If his travels had taught him anything, it was that nothing was ever that simple; there was _always _a third alternative (Even if sometimes, such as when he was face-to-face with Davros/Grandfather Paradox, the third option was almost as bad as the other two)...

His decision made, the Doctor turned around to aim his gun at the Master once again.

_Time for Door Number Three_, he thought grimly.

"Get out of the way," he said simply.

For a moment, the Master was smiling at him, the insanity and animosity of centuries fading for a moment to reveal the boy who'd accompanied him in their first exploration of the Matrix all those years ago...

Then the Master ducked to the side, his face no longer blocking the shot as the Doctor fired the gun into the Key Generator, dislodging the white point star and setting the circuits ablaze as the energy shorted out.

"The link is broken!" the Doctor proclaimed, turning back to stare intently as Rassilon, wind whirling around them from the energy being drawn in as the Time Lock reasserted itself. "Back into the Time War, Rassilon! Back into _Hell_!"

For a moment, as the two old rivals stared at each other- the man who had sought to preserve Gallifrey over the man who had chosen to preserve the wider cosmos-, the Doctor heard a brief, vague scream about Gallifrey's fall, but ignored it; the more immediate issue right now was Rassilon raising the gauntlet...

"You die with me, Doctor!" he said bitterly.

"I know," the Doctor replied simply.

He couldn't even look at Innocet one last time as she hid her face behind her hands once more, his gaze fixed on the enemy who had committed unspeakable crimes against the universe to try and preserve his people beyond the constraints of the natural order, the gauntlet glowing all the more intensely as the light of the temporary time corridor Rassilon had established to Earth began to draw the Time Lords back into the War...

"Gout of the way," a voice said from behind him. Looking back, the Doctor just had time to see the Master rubbing his hands together, his gaze fixed on Rassilon.

The Doctor didn't bother to question his old friend; as soon as the Master launched his first blast of his own life energy from his hands, the Doctor had dived out of harm's way, the blast striking Rassilon in the chest and causing him to lose the concentration necessary to control the gauntlet.

"You did this to me!" the Master roared, continuing to pour his own energy into the assault as he roared at the man before him. "All of my life! _You made me_!"

As he began to launch further blasts at Rassilon, the Master drew ever closer to the glow of the time corridor, becoming inceasingly indistinct as he approached his enemy, the brilliance of the corridor making it hard for the Doctor to even see what was happening, the pain of his damaged body still his primary concern as he fell to the ground once more, trying to shield himself physically and mentally from the pain and anguish of the screams of his Time Lord brethren dying in the War all over again...

Then the light faded, the power of the nearly broken Time Lock dying down around him, leaving him lying on the floor, staring at his outstretched right hand.

His _unchanged _right hand.

His hands, his clothes, his face... even his hair... they all... _felt _the same.

He hadn't regenerated...

"I'm alive..." he whispered, almost unable to believe it as he struggled upwards so that he was resting on his knees, small pieces of glass being brushed aside as he moved, disbelieving sobs shaking his body at the realisation of what had happened...

Then the sound of four knocks broke the silence that had settled in the room, and the Doctor's jubilation faded.

Wilfred Mott... trapped behind Vinvocci glass... in a machine that would release a lethal radiation burst as soon as anyone touched _anything _to try and get him out.

This was it.

The moment that the Ood and Carmen had predicted would take place.

Just as his fifth self had died to save Peri...

Just as his last self had given his life to save Rose...

He would now give his life for Wilf.

He wouldn't be the Doctor if he did anything else.

He couldn't bring himself to reflect on the irony of the situation as he turned to look at Wilf; this marked the _third _time that one of the Master's plans would result in the loss of a life without the plan's central goal being his death...

* * *

AN: To those who want to know, Gabriel and Tanith were enemies of the Seventh Doctor in the novel "Falls the Shadow", serving as the physical manifestation of the pain of the spirits who had been erased from existence due to the actions of time travellers erasing the timelines that would create them

AN 2: Regarding Rassilon, the Eighth Doctor confronted Rassilon in the audios "Zagreus" and "The Next Life", where it was revealed that Rassilon lived on in the Time Lord Matrix- the repository for the knowledge of all deceased Time Lords-, seeking to vanquish the race that would have evolved to surpass the Time Lords by sealing them in the universe of anti-time and subsequently contaminating the Doctor with anti-time to become his assassin against them. The Doctor was able to resist the anti-time infection long enough to be cured of it by his companions, subsequently banishing Rassilon into the anti-time universe for good, but given his presence it would appear that the Time Lords of the Time War were able to rescue him to lead them in the Time War

AN 3: For those who don't know, Innocet was the Doctor's Cousin, introduced in the Seventh Doctor novel "Lungbarrow", where the Doctor returned to his childhood home of Lungbarrow. I acknowledge that the popular theory about the woman is that she was the Doctor's mother, but in the most commonly-used versions of the Doctor's birth- neither of which have been expressly confirmed as his true birth-, he was either generated from the genetic looms that all Time Lords come from or he was the child of a Time Lord father and a human mother, so the woman obviously _cannot _have been the Doctor's mother if the first is true as the Doctor would have never had a mother, and in the second instance it's unlikely that a human woman- regardless of her heritage- would have been allowed _any _kind of say in the final fate of Gallifrey at such a crucial moment; with this in mind, Innocet made the best candidate. The reference to the incident with Glospin refers to the First Doctor's confrontation with his Cousin Glospin, who claimed to have discovered evidence that the Doctor wasn't a member of the House of Lungbarrow and was thus an unknown 'outsider'- the full implications of this weren't explained- before he was forced to leave the Doctor; faced with a choice between returning to Lungbarrow and facing his accusers after having already been banished from the house or leaving the accusations for good, the Doctor chose to take the TARDIS and leave Gallifrey, rather than try and find an alternative to clear his name and preserve his family


End file.
